The Way Forward in Iraq: An Examination of the Petraeus-Crocker Progress Report

Transcript

CARLOS PASCUAL: We are here today to focus attention on U.S. policy in Iraq and the directions of that policy. Obviously there has been a huge amount of attention on this issue and a lot of decisions perhaps might have been made in passing. We will hear tonight from the President in his statement on U.S. policy, but we have been given a fairly good idea from General Petraeus of what that statement might actually be. Interestingly, if we look at his proposal on the troop withdrawals that might occur by the end of the year and then over the course of the first 7 months into 2008, where we might find ourselves from a military perspective in the middle of 2008 is from a military posture exactly where we were in January 2007.

So the question that it inevitably raises for us is that from a force present perspective we may be in exactly the same place. Will we be in a different place substantively? Is this a policy that will be sustainable? Is it a policy that will have an impact? Is it a policy that will really make a difference to the viability of Iraq as a state and one that will at least be able to achieve stability, much less a state that might be a viable democracy? These are some of the questions that we want to address today.

. . .In addressing the questions of sustainability, obviously we will look at some of the questions related to the military presence, but I hope that you will also participate with us in exploring the political dimensions of this as well. In the hearings over the previous days there has obviously been a lot of talk about politics in Iraq, but probably in a less-conclusive way than we have seen the debate on some of the military questions that we have had so far. At a national level we have heard statements about the dysfunctionality of government and a lot of hope has been placed on what might be able to happen locally and whether that can build itself from the bottom up, and we should take a close look at that, in particular whether there is a potential for the kinds of deals that have been struck with the Sunnis to be replicated elsewhere, even whether some of those deals are viable in the long-term, and this is one of the issues that I think deserve a great deal of attention because if we cannot address both the military and the political issues together then overall we cannot see how we can put together a viable policy for Iraq as a whole.

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